Guillermo del Toro’s horror film Crimson Peak is a disinhibited
Gothic banquet. Time and time again the Mexican director pays homage to the
literary genre; we’re given trapped heroines, attics, ghouls, castles, windswept
nights, screams, villains. The film is thick with references, from 1764’s Castle of Otranto and 1794’s Mysteries of Udulpho and, down through Northanger Abbey and Jane Eyre.

Crimson Peak tells the story of young
American author Edith Cushing, played by Mia Wasikowska, who falls in love with
handsome baronet Thomas Sharpe (Tom
Hiddleston). She's then whisked off to his crumbling castle in Cumbria, outside
of the realms of civilisation - and on a
border with reality. The house holds wicked secrets, and a good few
ghosts.

The acting is strong throughout and, though Jessica Chastain’s
English accent doesn’t quite cut glass, she makes a thrilling villainess. The
crowning glory of this film, though, is its aesthetics. Kate Hawley’s costumes
are exquisite; sumptuous velvets, outrageously overlarge shoulders and gorgeous
colours. The production design is gloriously rococo; every surface is
embellished, everything is fluted, or vaulted. It must have taken years. Thick
red ooze runs down the walls, due to the red clay beneath the house (hence:
Crimson Peak). Snowflakes fall daintily through the ruptured roof.

But that’s where it ends, for Crimson Peak. This visual
feast lacks punch: the plot is a bit lame, a bit predictable. The film sags in
the middle. Del Toro’s insistence on extreme violence, seen close up, felt
shoved-in.

Pan’s Labyrinth was brilliant because of its originality. We
wish del Toro had taken more risks with Crimson
Peak. We were desperate for him to surprise us. Instead, we’re given
something beautiful, generic and a touch soul-less.